a book
Mama Day
Gloria Naylor · 1993 · 312 pages
A powerful generational saga at once tender and suspenseful, overflowing with magic and common sense, this book "resonates with genuine excitement … a big, strong, admirable novel” (New York Times Book Review).
On the island of Willow Springs, off the Georgia coast, the powers of healer Mama Day are tested by her great niece, Cocoa, a stubbornly emancipated woman endangered by the island's darker forces.
On the island of Willow Springs, off the Georgia coast, the powers of healer Mama Day are tested by her great niece, Cocoa, a stubbornly emancipated woman endangered by the island's darker forces.
recommended by 1 person
sourced from public statements
Carmen Maria Machado
“A teacher handed me a copy of Mama Day when I was a teenager, and — to put it mildly — I was not ready. Some of it tapped into narrative pleasures I already loved: multi-generational stories, dark forces, mysterious illnesses. Some of it created new obsessions: magic, fictional islands, tragic endings. Some of it went right over my head. (Shockingly, at fifteen I didn’t quite have a grasp on the perils and pitfalls of trying to be a modern woman.) But there’s no doubt that Naylor’s witchy and beautiful novel created a desire in me to write stories that evoke such a singular mood, hypnotic and unforgettable.”↗